Review: Bluesound Vault

Introduction and features

Bluesound boasts a listening experience like no other, aiming to bring the attention to detail and focus on sonic perfection of top end hi-fi into the modern, convenient world of wireless connectivity.

The brand is from some of the people behind NAD, who have been making quality amplifiers since the 1970's. So they really should know what they are doing when it comes to good sound.

There are a number of products in the Bluesound ecosystem, some designed to work with your existing hi-fi set up and some self contained speakers. The Vault is the former, consisting of a high end DAC - supporting up to 24-bit 192khz recordings - with a CD burner and 2TB hard drive built in.

Managed through an app on either iOS or android, or via a computer, the vault can rip CDs to the highest definition possible, and also stream music from your tablet or phone from a number of online music services, including Tidal, Spotify and Tunein radio.

The unit itself has a sleek, minimalist design, a shiny black and chrome cube with just one button on the top and a slot in the front for CDs. It connects to your router via an ethernet cable, and to your stereo system via an RCA phono cable. There are also a couple of USB sockets and a digital optical input on the back.

All the cables you could possibly need are included in the box, which is a nice touch, including two different length ethernet cables, as well as gold plated RCA to RCA and RCA to minijack.

It's meant to be left on all the time, claiming extremely low power consumption when not in use, which is why it has no actual power button.

The single button instead both mutes the device and lets you know what the Vault is up to by changing colour and flashing in various different ways.

It's very simple to set up - just plug it in and it will connect to you local network and can then be accessed directly from the app.

Sound quality and performance

The vault sounds amazing.

I tested it using a classic NAD amp I bought in 1997 (still going strong nearly 20 years later, testament to Bluesound's heritage) and a pair of similarly-aged Mission 732 speakers and they really came alive.

The difference was so much more than when playing the same audio from a phone or tablet.

High definition streaming from tidal is a joy, and CD's copied in the highest quality format sounded as good as, if not better, than they did in my CD player.

It really is only when you hear it that you can appreciate how much better high definition audio is - it's not so much that MP3's don't sound okay, just that FLAC and WAV files sound better. Much better.

The action of saving your music into the Vault couldn't be easier. You just pop a CD in, the Vault rips it to whichever file format you have chosen, finds the metadata - artist name, album title, track names and artwork - adds it to your library and ejects the disk to let it know when it's done.

You really don't have to do anything.

The process takes a while, although may be quicker at lower quality settings, but you can start playing tracks once they are added while the rest copy if you're feeling particularly impatient.

The Vault doesn't actually play CDs though, but there is so much storage space that unless you have a really big collection you can probably fit it all in - there's room for literally thousands of albums.

The Vault then acts as a networked drive as well, so you can use it to wirelessly back up data and play music from your computers and anything else on your network. Just tell it where to look and it will add it all to your library.

Another nice touch.

Control

The Vault is controlled from an app on either iOS or android, pc or mac.

From here you can play any of the music you've saved on the vault, and stream from services like Spotify.

It works by adding tracks you select from either your library or one of your streaming services to a playlist which you then play them from.

This feels a bit strange at first. It's not intuitive at all as usually you just play things straight from their respective app - you click tracks, and they play - whereas in the Bluesound app you click tracks, and it adds them to the playlist instead.

These feels a bit pointless at first, but once you have spent a bit of time adding albums to your library it makes more sense - it encourages more attentive listening because you don't just jump from one track to another as soon as you select it.

At first I just added loads of songs, but after a while I found myself being more selective about what I lined up to play.

The Bluesound is angled more at those who like to take time to listen to music as an activity in its own right, rather than cater to those who just want to whack something on in the background.

We get so used to everything being instant and simplified these days that when things are a little bit complicated and require some time and effort we are instantly resistant to them, but generally the more you put into something the more you get out of it. I very much found this the case with the Bluesound system.

Once you have a massive library to sort through, you can add a few albums to the playlist and listen through that without getting bogged down and distracted by the weight of all the other music you own.

The app is easy enough to navigate your way around, with a menu to the side to which you add the streaming services you want to use alongside your own music collection.

There are loads of these on offer, I added Spotify and Tidal, as these are two of the main contenders to the music streaming crown. Apple Music is now live, but there's no clear idea when this will find its way into the Bluesound world.

It is apparently on the list for an upcoming update, but nothing concrete has been released.

Tracks from Tidal have to be added to the playlist, as can tracks from Spotify, although Bluesound gear does support Spotify connect, so you can use Spotify's app itself to control what's playing.

I found this the easiest way of streaming, with the familiarity of use and greater catalogue of the Spotify app beating the superior sound quality of Tidal, which you have to use inside the confines of the Bluesound app.

Tidal though is pushed slightly, with links to the albums appearing in songs you copy yourself into the library.

Verdict

I had a few teething problems with the vault.

The first CD I ripped copied fine, but for some reason the Vault also created a second album with just track 5 in it, without any info.

Just track 5, unknown album by unknown artist.

There was no obvious way to remove this from within the Bluesound app. The second CD I tried to rip produced an album with just track 1 in it.

Twenty-four times.

When the third CD got half way through ripping and gave up, I did a factory reset on the Vault. I then had to go into it using my laptop and delete the weird albums from the hard drive and start from scratch.

This time it copied the first CD fine, but refused to copy the second one at all. Granted, it is pretty old and has been played a lot, but it's not scratched to bits and plays flawlessly from start to finish in other CD players.

Almost every other disc I tried after that worked perfectly, but still a couple more wouldn't play ball either.

I found myself revisiting some classic albums I had totally forgotten about, although a lot of the CDs I own are available on either Spotify, Tidal or both. I don't have n extensive CD collection though. The vault is more for people with a huge collection of discs who want to bring that music into the 21st century without compromising on sound quality in any way.

If you have shelves full of CD's you never get round to playing any more, a few hours with the vault will set your music free.

Streaming music from the vault to the Bluesound Pulse was so simple and great for having the same music playing in different rooms of the house, though you can play different tunes on different Bluesound devices at the same time as well.

We liked

That sleek, minimal design is beautiful. And the lack of complex controls means that even the least tech-savvy of audiophiles will be able to back up their collection of rare, bootleg Pink Floyd B-sides without worry.

The sound quality is also excellent. Being able to both rip your audio at the highest quality settings, as well as playback serious Hi-Res Audio files from your library, makes the Vault a very versatile device.

During my testing Bluesound has updated the app a good number of times too, improving it with each iteration, which gives me confidence it will only get better over time.

We disliked

As I mentioned earlier, to begin with the way the app is laid out feels rather counter-intuitive. Though I did get used to its quirks, it could do with a flatter learning curve.

I also had some issues with Vault not coping too well with certain CDs from my library. With some lesser known discs you might run into some metadata problems. And when there isn't an easy way to edit that data yourself the Vault's hands-off approach can get awkward.

There's also no way to get around the fact that at nearly £900 the Bluesound Vault is a vastly expensive device. If it was absolutely falwless then it would get a more glowing recommendation, but as it is I've got to temper my enthusiasm for it.

Verdict

The Bluesound Vault is a great way to digitally free your music.

If you've got a ton of CD's you never listen to but don't want the hassle and constraints of your ripping them into your computer, then this could be the easy storage medium for you.

If you've got the wallet to cope, that is.

The Vault doesn't compromise on sound quality, thanks to its high-end DAC and NAD heritage, and makes mixing your collection with all that the cloud has to offer utterly effortless.

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